May 6, 2005

Apparently a pastor at a small Baptist church in East Waynesville, North Carolina, told his flock that if they didn’t support George W. Bush that they should leave his church forever. Many liberals are aghast, seeing this in a further religious war against them. While there is a strident Conservative Christian movement taking crazy actions against liberals every day I don’t know who widespread it is. I think most American Christians just want to go to work, raise their kids, and watch blockbusters at the movies, not turn the nation into a theocracy.

Anyhow, the folks over at Daily Kos (which I was recently disappointed to learn is pronounced “kose”, not “kahs”, like I’d previously thought) have come up with a number of action items to combat this church’s anti-liberalism. The first is to contact the IRS. Which is a good point, really. Churches are exempt from paying taxes, unless they also involve themselves in politics. This pastor’s fiery attack may end up crippling his church. Good work, guy.

I grew up with assholes like that because I attended private schools. It always blew me away that they could talk about the Sermon on the Mount, and yet still say “Please vote for our Godly leaders Reagan and Bush.” However “Rev.” Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps is even more worse that these guys, or the crapsack preachers i grew up with.

I grew up with assholes like that because I’m from South Carolina. I wish it was just one nutjob, but it isn’t. Here, intolerance is pretty much the norm, and it’s reinforced by crackpot religious freaks (which are also more common than one would think). That’s why it’s so scary that there is an evangelical in the white house. Before Bush, these people kept their fanatical opinions mostly to themselves. Now, they see an opportunity to make their opinions the law, and Bush got elected because the fanatics saw that opportunity and collectively voted to seize it. Calling the IRS is a great idea though. The preachers stay fat and happy because of the collection plate that’s passed around every Sunday.

Actually, Robin, the Holy Rollers and the Moonies got into some lower ranking positions in the Reagan admin., and arch-wacko Pat Robertson ran for the Presidency in 1988, so Fundies in government are not a new thing. What is (as you pointed out) is that the Prez. is now one, as was head of the Justice Dept. BTW, Robertson was able to build up the “Christian Coalition” using the mailing list he had amassed during his failed bid for the Presidency, a nice example of “function creep.”

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October 11, 2011

Recursive

Some years back, I wrote about my recent visit to Comic Con, the yearly pop culture mega-convention in San Diego. I did some critiquing of it, and “entertainment journalism” as willing accomplices/collaborators of the entertainment industry’s marketing machine. What was most interesting to me at the time is the way that secrecy built hype. You’re a big video game company, you’ve got a new game coming out in a year, but you hide all the details. Which makes all of the fans and “journalists” so hungry for news that they’ll jump at your tiniest leak or press release. This makes good tacticaly sense for marketers, but ends up being pretty insane for the audience.

And today, I’ve just seen the most ridiculous example of parceled-out hype in a while.

A big, new superhero movie called “The Avengers” is going to be released in the spring of 2012. And today, there was much pomp and giddiness for the release of the First Official Trailer. Remember, this isn’t the movie that fans want to see, this is a commercial for the movie. But that wasn’t enough. Yesterday, the television show “Entertainment Tonight” gave us all an “exclusive first look” at the commercial. For those of you who couldn’t wait 12 hours, the TV show showed clips of the commercial for the movie you actually want to see.

And that’s not all! One popular fan site gave readers a “preview” of the Entertainment Tonight segment! So you could watch a preview of the preview of the commerical for the movie.

I understand why the studios do this, and I sometimes get caught up in the spiral myself. Hell, there’s even some logic buried in there for the fans. But, objectively speaking, that doesn’t make it any less nuts.